Romania din Spania

Autoritatile franceze au anuntat miercuri ca vor darama toate taberele de romi amplasate ilegal si vor expulza tiganii din alte state UE care comit infractiuni pe teritoriul Frantei, informeaza AFP. Anuntul vine in urma unei reuniuni speciale convocate de presedintele Nicolas Sarkozy la Palatul Elysee, acesta avertizand ca minoritatile creeaza "o problema de securitate" in Franta.​

Forget about checking-in to venues. Apparently, the new thing to do is to check-in to whatever you’re doing — like watching television shows, or reading a book. It’s something that Hot Potato offers, and they’re in the process of being acquired by Facebook. It’s what GetGlue offers as well, and they’re already seeing over 4.5 million ratings and check-ins a month now. And today, the service is announcing a new exclusive partnership with HBO.

Starting on August 1, when you use GetGlue to check-in watching one of HBO’s hit shows, you’ll earn exclusive stickers designed by HBO. If you’re aware of Foursquare badges or Gowalla pins, it’s the same idea, except based around content. The three shows HBO has selected for this promotion are True Blood, Hung, and Entourage — three of their hottest shows.

To earn these stickers, all you have to do is use the GetGlue iPhone app or one of their web browser extensions and check-in to say you’re watching one of the mentioned shows. There are also several other stickers for each show that you can earn by doing other things such as commenting on shows or checking-in multiple times to a show. GetGlue won’t reveal the secrets to earn them all (it is a game, after all), but they make it seem as if loyal fans (meaning loyal GetGlue users in this case too) will be able to get all the stickers.

GetGlue also sets itself apart by sending users actual stickers when they ask for them. Thousands of these stickers have been sent out to users already, I’m told. It’s a gimmick, but an interesting one that seems great for promotional purposes.

These types of deals are becoming an increasingly important means for these services to rope in users. Rival Miso has also been doing similar deals (here’s one for the movie Hot Tub Time Machine). Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Whrrl, and all the other location check-in services have also been signing similar deals left and right in an attempt to lure in users to their respective games. And it’s more than that, as we’ve seen with Foursquare, if a brand is really sold on the idea, they’ll even start promoting you — like VH1 and Bravo.

That said, these deals usually don’t mean a lot (if any) money for these startups yet. These badges and stickers aren’t easily monetizable, GetGlue CEO Alex Iskold tells us. That said, they establish a relationship with the brand, and eventually the plan is to offer other things to them in exchange for money — such as detailed analytics about who is checking-in to their products.

It was just last month that GetGlue said it was doing 1.5 million ratings and check-ins every month — again, now that’s surged to 4.5 million. The plan for the service’s over 500,000 users is to offer up content recommendations based on these check-ins and ratings. So the more, the better, obviously.

You can find GetGlue’s iPhone app here. Iskold says iPad and Android apps should be out in a matter of weeks as well.

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Purtătorul de cuvânt al preşedintelui Traian Băsescu precizează că şeful statului ia notă cu regret de "gesturile tot mai iresponsabile" ale lui Dan Voiculescu, liderul PC fiind acuzat că întreţine o "confuzie" privind voinţa politică a Senatului
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Potrivit unui cercetător, care a analizat nivelul bacteriilor de pe mai multe telefoane mobile, aceste aparate ar putea constitui o adevărată ameninţare pentru sănătate.
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Last May, Kanye West was pissed off. Why? Because people were impersonating him on Twitter. He was so mad that he even wrote a blog post about it — entirely in CAPS. It began, “(This spaz comes courtesy of losers making fake Kanye West Twitter accounts) I DON’T HAVE A FUCKING TWITTER… WHY WOULD I USE TWITTER???“

Well, apparently someone has convinced the hip hop star why he should use Twitter, because as of two hours ago he’s on the service and tweeting away.

The first tweet from his verified account reads, “Up early in the morning taking meetings in Silicone Valley.” In true Twitter fashion, he quickly followed up with, “Lol I spelled Silicon wrong ( I guess I was still thinking about the other type of silicone ITS A PROCESS!! : )” And then like all good Twitter users, he proceeds to link to self-promotional content for the next half dozen tweets.

What’s interesting about those links is that they’re to big sites that covered his impromptu freestyle session at Facebook’s headquarters yesterday (sadly, we got no shout-out even though we were the first — no love Kanye?). But what’s most interesting about that is that he actually complains about Twitter in his freestyle, noting that Twitter users were directing racial slurs at him after the whole Taylor Swift fiasco — you know, the situation that led to brilliant sites like this. Now, just a day later, West has apparently made peace with the service and has started doing what he didn’t have time for last year — tweeting.

West seems to have changed his blog since last year, so the old link to his rant doesn’t work anymore, so I’ll paste it below. Meanwhile, his latest blog post confirms that the new Twitter account is in fact his.

(This spaz comes courtesy of losers making fake Kanye West Twitter accounts) I DON’T HAVE A FUCKING TWITTER… WHY WOULD I USE TWITTER??? I ONLY BLOG 5 PERCENT OF WHAT I’M UP TO IN THE FIRST PLACE. I’M ACTUALLY SLOW DELIVERING CONTENT BECAUSE I’M TOO BUSY ACTUALLY BUSY BEING CREATIVE MOST OF THE TIME AND IF I’M NOT AND I’M JUST LAYING ON A BEACH I WOULDN’T TELL THE WORLD. EVERYTHING THAT TWITTER OFFERS I NEED LESS OF. THE PEOPLE AT TWITTER KNOW I DON’T HAVE A FUCKING TWITTER SO FOR THEM TO ALLOW SOMEONE TO POSE AS ME AND ACCUMULATE OVER A MILLION NAMES IS IRRESPONSIBLE AND DECEITFUL TO THERE FAITHFUL USERS. REPEAT… THE HEADS OF TWITTER KNEW I DIDN’T HAVE A TWITTER AND THEY HAVE TO KNOW WHICH ACCOUNTS HAVE HIGH ACTIVITY ON THEM. IT’S A FUCKING FARCE AND IT MAKES ME QUESTION WHAT OTHER SO CALLED CELEBRITY TWITTERS ARE ACTUALLY REAL OR FAKE. HEY TWITTER, TAKE THE SO CALLED KANYE WEST TWITTER DOWN NOW …. WHY? … BECAUSE MY CAPS LOCK KEY IS LOUD!!!!!!!!!

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Watch out Meebo, there’s a new kid on the block. Israeli startup Wibiya, which publicly launched its web-based, customizable toolbar to publishers in January of this year, is seeing impressive traffic for a year-old company.

According to Quantcast, Wibiya is seeing 151 million monthly visitors to its toolbars. In contrast, Quantcast also reports that Meebo is currently seeing 143 million monthly visitors. Currently, Wibiya has more than 70,000 active websites using its toolbar, including TheStreet, TheOnion, Playboy, Philly.com, JellyBelly.com and more. Wibiya says that nearly 1000 new websites are adding the toolbar per day.

Wibiya’s toolbar for blogs and publishers integrates services from social media sites, applications and widgets. Everything is customizable, giving publishers the ability to add Facebook Connect, enabling Twitter alerts, and tap into chat app TinyChat fairly easily. The toolbar has a fairly in-depth integration with Twitter, featuring search, latest Tweets, Tweets about each page and more. Publishers can also bring their Facebook Fan Page stream to the toolbar. Wibiya also has an “app store” of sorts, where publishers can customize their bars with a variety of apps, including Google Translate, YouTube, Cooliris’s 3D video galleries, games and more.

In the future, Wibiya plans to roll out an API to developers, allowing others to integrate their own applications onto the Wibiya platform and track their application’s performance.

Of course, Meebo is seeing steady growth as well, and they are much better known. But it should be interesting to see how Facebook’s planned social bar, which was announced this year at the social network’s developer conference, will effect the growth of both Meebo and Wibiya.

Facebook’s new bar will apparently allow third party sites to quickly integrate a ‘Like’ button and Facebook Chat. But the details are still unclear as to how customizable Facebook’s social bar will be, and if it will include support for Twitter, email, MySpace and other media platforms. Meebo and Wibiya could stand out as more flexible alternatives to publishers if the social network’s new toolbar is too Facebook-centric.

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Aproape 60 de medici străini au primit aviz să lucreze temporar în clinicile naţionale, în ultimii doi ani, în timp ce peste 8.000 de doctori au plecat să lucreze în alte state, puţini dintre aceştia revenind în ţară, dar pe salarii ca în străinătate.
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O nouă scurgere de petrol s-a produs în Louisiana, în urma ciocnirii unui remorcher cu un puţ de petrol de la nord de strâmtoarea unde s-a scufundat platforma petrolieră Deepwater Horizon, ce a provocat cea mai gravă poluare din istoria SUA, relatează RIA Novosti.
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Regimul armelor neletale a fost inasprit, iar persoanele care vor sa intre in posesia acestora trebuie sa se supuna unui examen psihologic si sa nu fi avut condamnari penale pentru fapte cu violenta, a decis Guvernul, context in care ministrii au discutat si despre incidentele de la Cogealac. Proiectul de lege, aprobat in sedinta de miercuri a Executivului, a fost prezentat de catre ministrul Internelor, Vasile Blaga, au declarat pentru Mediafax surse oficiale.

Dacă în Moldova apele distrug casele, în vestul ţării tornadele fac prăpăd. În această seară, peretele unei sere din apropiere de Arad a fost smuls şi purtat în aer câţiva zeci de metri.
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Doi indivizi au jefuit miercuri seară o casă de schimb valutar din Capitală, de unde au furat 5.000 de lei.
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Last year, we covered the launch of Home-Account, a mortgage search and counseling service. Though launched in the implosion of the housing market, the site raised funding from an impressive group of investors, including Charles River Ventures, Marc Benioff, Ron Conway, Mark Pincus, and Jeff Clavier. One of the seed investors in the round was personal finance site Bills.com, which put close to a million dollars in Home-Account. Today, Home-Account is announcing that it has been acquired by Bills.com. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

A Kayak.com for mortgages, Home-Account offers a free and paid service for those who are looking for mortgage or to re-finance. Home-Account helps consumers find the right mortgage for their needs and credit histories from its partner lenders. Home-Account doesn’t make commissions from the buyers or the lenders, like some online mortgage services like LendingTree.com and LowerMyBills.com. It makes money solely from the consumer subscriptions. Home-Account’s founder Mark Goldstein says that since the company’s launch last year, the startup helped close “hundreds of mortgages.”

Since Bills.com was an investor, the company worked closely with Home-Account and found that it would fit well with Bills.com’s mission to be a resource to help people make better financial decisions. Ethan Ewing, President of Bills.com says that the company plans to take the Home-Account platform, and scale to other financial decisions, such as paying off credit card debt.

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Pe data de 29 iulie, cei cinci membri ai formatiei Animal X vor realiza o premiera pentru lumea muzicala romaneasca, mutandu-si studioul la Ibiza pentru o luna si jumatate, cu ocazia realizarii noului lor album. "Ne doream de foarte mult timp sa mergem afara sa facem un album. In timp, am strans sculele necesare de studio, caci e nevoie de aparatura speciala pentru un studio mobil. Planul e de acum patru ani si acum l-am pus in aplicare", a explicat Serban Copot (Hiena), liderul trupei.

Preşedintele israelian Shimon Peres a transmis condoleanţe poporului român şi familiilor îndoliate, după accidentul de elicopter în care şi-au pierdut viaţa şase militari israelieni şi un român.
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După fabulospirite, Dracula, Hagi sau tărâmul alegerilor, mereu surprinzătoarea România a ajuns să se vândă în lume cu “grădina carpatică”. De 20 de ani, brandul nostru de ţară îşi caută, fără succes, identitatea.
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Indicii Bursei de Valori Bucuresti au realizat astazi o zi cu inchideri negative, in urma unei sesiuni petrecuta, cu exceptia primei ore de tranzactionare, sub nivelurile de inchidere de ieri. Indicele societatilor de investitii financiare a suferit cea mai mare scadere procentuala, de 2.09%.

Executivul a decis ca până la finele anului să fie implementat sistemul informatic integrat în domeniul sănătăţii. La anul se va introduce şi cardul de sănătate şi reţeta electronică.
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You can always count on Hunch founder Chris Dixon for interesting Tweets.  He just sent out this one:

turns out patent trolling might not pay. Intellectual Ventures has negative 78% return.http://bit.ly/bSfamC

The link is a PDf download of a document from the University of Texas Management Company listing all of its private investments in venture funds and private equity funds, along with their internal rates of return (IRR). One of the worst performers is Intellectual Ventures, the patent portfolio fund started by Nathan Myrhvold that has a reputation for patent extortion. One of its funds, the Invention Development Fund I, has a negative 73 percent IRR (Dixon mistakenly thought it was negative 78 percent, but close enough). Another fund, the Invention Investment Fund II, has a negative 10 percent return. The two funds combined are delivering a negative 36.66 percent IRR for the University of Texas.

These figures only show the returns to the University of Texas, which may have invested at the wrong time. They are from inception to May 31, 2010. The University of Texas invested a total of $28 million in those two funds, and may still get a return on its investment, but this glimpse into how Intellectual Ventures is doing for one of its limited partners suggests that at least those two funds are having trouble.

The University of Texas is doing better with some of its more traditional venture funds. For instance, its average return across seven Austin Venture funds is 28.76 percent, with Austin Ventures IV up 73.14 percent. According to the document, Union Square Ventures 2004 fund is up 48.37 percent. But there are some lackluster VC returns too. For instance, the IRR on Union Square Ventures 2008 so far is negative 15.75 percent and Integral Capital Partners is showing a lackluster 1.56 percent IRR. Again these numbers are admittedly only snapshot, but they are informative nonetheless.

The document is embedded below.

View this document on Scribd CrunchBase InformationIntellectual VenturesAustin VenturesUnion Square VenturesInformation provided by CrunchBase

"Cred ca Romania, impreuna cu toate celelalte tari europene au o obligatie comuna in privinta problemei romilor", a declarat premierul Emil Boc intrebat de un jurnalist daca aderarea Romaniei la Schengen ar putea fi afectata din cauza modului in care este gestionata problema romilor. Secretarul de stat francez pentru afaceri europene, Pierre Lellouche, a criticat guvernul roman pentru modul in care actioneaza in problema romilor. Intr-un interviu pentru RFI, el reproseaza autoritatilor de la Bucuresti ca nu isi indeplinesc promisiunile si spune ca Franta are "rezerve" in privinta aderarii Romaniei la spatiul Schengen in 2011. Pierre Lellouche mai spune ca statele europene sunt responsabile pentru ceea ce fac cetatenii lor si ca Romania este prima responsabila pentru romii romani.

Agenţia Naţională a Medicamentului a retras 21 de medicamente de pe piaţă. Pastilele aveau erori de inscripţionare privind compoziţia produsului, indicaţiile terapeutice şi modul de administrare.
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